1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to medical device systems and methods capable of detecting and, in some embodiments, treating an occurring or impending seizure using multimodal body data.
2. Description of the Related Art
Of the approximately 60 million people worldwide affected with epilepsy, roughly 23 million people suffer from epilepsy resistant to multiple medications. In the USA alone, the annual cost of epilepsy care is USD 12 billion (in 1995 dollars), most of which is attributable to subjects with pharmaco-resistant seizures. Pharmaco-resistant seizures are associated with an increase mortality and morbidity (e.g., compared to the general population and to epileptics whose seizures are controlled by medications) and with markedly degraded quality of life for patients. Seizures may impair motor control, responsiveness to a wide class of stimuli, and other cognitive functions. The sudden onset of a patient's impairment of motor control, responsiveness, and other cognitive functions precludes the performance of necessary and even simple daily life tasks such as driving a vehicle, cooking, or operating machinery, as well as more complex tasks such as acquiring knowledge and socializing.
Therapies using electrical currents or fields to provide a therapy to a patient (electrotherapy) are beneficial for certain neurological disorders, such as epilepsy. Implantable medical devices have been effectively used to deliver therapeutic electrical stimulation to various portions of the human body (e.g., the vagus nerve) for treating epilepsy. As used herein, “stimulation,” “neurostimulation,” “stimulation signal,” “therapeutic signal,” or “neurostimulation signal” refers to the direct or indirect application of an electrical, mechanical, magnetic, electro-magnetic, photonic, acoustic, cognitive, and/or chemical signal to an organ or a neural structure in the patient's body. The signal is an exogenous signal that is distinct from the endogenous electro-chemical activity inherent to the patient's body and also from that found in the environment. In other words, the stimulation signal (whether electrical, mechanical, magnetic, electro-magnetic, photonic, acoustic, cognitive, and/or chemical in nature) applied to a cranial nerve or to other nervous tissue structure in the present invention is a signal applied from a medical device, e.g., a neurostimulator.
A “therapeutic signal” refers to a stimulation signal delivered to a patient's body with the intent of treating a medical condition through a suppressing (e.g., blocking) or modulating effect to neural tissue. The effect of a stimulation signal on neuronal activity may be suppressing or modulating; however, for simplicity, the terms “stimulating”, suppressing, and modulating, and variants thereof, are sometimes used interchangeably herein. In general, however, the delivery of an exogenous signal itself refers to “stimulation” of an organ or a neural structure, while the effects of that signal, if any, on the electrical activity of the neural structure are properly referred to as suppression or modulation.
Depending upon myriad factors such as the history (recent and distant) of a patient's brain activity (e.g., electro-chemical, mental, emotional), stimulation parameters and time of day, to name a few, the effects of stimulation upon the neural tissue may be excitatory or inhibitory, facilitatory or disfacilitatory and may suppress, enhance, or leave unaltered neuronal activity. For example, the suppressing effect of a stimulation signal on neural tissue would manifest as the blockage of abnormal activity (e.g., epileptic seizures) see Osorio et al., Ann Neurol 2005; Osorio & Frei IJNS 2009) The mechanisms thorough which this suppressing effect takes place are described in the foregoing articles. Suppression of abnormal neural activity is generally a threshold or suprathreshold process and the temporal scale over which it occurs is usually in the order of tens or hundreds of milliseconds. Modulation of abnormal or undesirable neural activity is typically a “sub-threshold” process in the spatio-temporal domain that may summate and result under certain conditions, in threshold or suprathreshold neural events. The temporal scale of modulation is usually longer than that of suppression, encompassing seconds to hours, even months. In addition to inhibition or dysfacilitation, modification of neural activity (e.g., wave annihilation) may be exerted through collision with identical, similar or dissimilar waves, a concept borrowed from wave mechanics, or through phase resetting (Winfree).
In some cases, electrotherapy may be provided by implanting an electrical device, e.g., an implantable medical device (IMD), inside a patient's body for stimulation of a nervous tissue, such as a cranial nerve. Generally, electrotherapy signals that suppress or modulate neural activity are delivered by the IMD via one or more leads. When applicable, the leads generally terminate at their distal ends in one or more electrodes, and the electrodes, in turn, are coupled to a target tissue in the patient's body. For example, a number of electrodes may be attached to various points of a nerve or other tissue inside a human body for delivery of a neurostimulation signal.
While contingent (also referred to as “closed-loop,” “active,” or “feedback” stimulation; i.e., electrotherapy applied in response to sensed information, such as heart rate) stimulation schemes have been proposed, non-contingent, programmed periodic stimulation is the prevailing modality. For example, vagus nerve stimulation for the treatment of epilepsy usually involves a series of grouped electrical pulses defined by an “on-time” (such as 30 sec.) and an “off-time” (such as 5 min.). This type of stimulation is also referred to as “open-loop,” “passive,” or “non-feedback” stimulation. Each sequence of pulses during an on-time may be referred to as a “pulse burst.” The burst is followed by the off-time period in which no signals are applied to the nerve. During the on-time, electrical pulses of a defined electrical current (e.g., 0.5-3.5 milliamps) and pulse width (e.g., 0.25-1.0 milliseconds) are delivered at a defined frequency (e.g., 20-30 Hz) for a certain duration (e.g., 10-60 seconds). The on-time and off-time parameters together define a duty cycle, which is the ratio of the on-time to the sum of the on-time and off-time, and which describes the fraction of time that the electrical signal is applied to the nerve.
In VNS, the on-time and off-time may be programmed to define an intermittent pattern in which a repeating series of electrical pulse bursts are generated and applied to a cranial nerve such as the vagus nerve. The off-time is provided to minimize adverse effects and conserve power. If the off-time is set at zero, the electrical signal in conventional VNS may provide continuous stimulation to the vagus nerve. Alternatively, the off time may be as long as one day or more, in which case the pulse bursts are provided only once per day or at even longer intervals. Typically, however, the ratio of “off-time” to “on-time” may range from about 0.5 to about 10.
In addition to the on-time and off-time, the other parameters defining the electrical signal in VNS may be programmed over a range of values. The pulse width for the pulses in a pulse burst of conventional VNS may be set to a value not greater than about 1 msec, such as about 250-500 μsec, and the number of pulses in a pulse burst is typically set by programming a frequency in a range of about 20-300 Hz (i.e., 20 pulses per second to 300 pulses per second). A non-uniform frequency may also be used. Frequency may be altered during a pulse burst by either a frequency sweep from a low frequency to a high frequency, or vice versa. Alternatively, the timing between adjacent individual signals within a burst may be randomly changed such that two adjacent signals may be generated at any frequency within a range of frequencies.
Although neurostimulation has proven effective in the treatment of a number of medical conditions, it would be desirable to further enhance and optimize neurostimulation-based therapy for this purpose. For example, it may be desirable to detect an occurring or impending seizure. Such detection may be useful in triggering a therapy, monitoring the course of a patient's disease, or the progress of his or her treatment thereof. Alternatively or in addition, such detection may be useful in issuing a warning of an impending or on-going seizure. Such a warning may, for example, minimize the risk of injury or death. Said warning may be perceived by the patient, a physician, a caregiver, or a suitably programmed computer and allow that person or computer program to take action intended to reduce the likelihood, duration, or severity of the seizure or impending seizure, or to facilitate further medical treatment or intervention for the patient. In particular, detection of an occurring or impending seizure enables the use of contingent neurostimulation. The state of the art does not provide an efficient and effective means for performing such detection and/or warning. Conventional VNS stimulation as described above does not detect occurring or impending seizures.
Closed-loop neurostimulation therapies for treating epilepsy have been proposed in which stimulation is triggered based upon factors including EEG activity (see, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 5,995,868 and U.S. Pat. No. 7,280,867) as well as cardiac-based activity (see, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 6,961,618 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,928,272). EEG- or ECoG-based approaches involving recording of neural electrical activity at any spatio-temporal scale involve determination of one or more parameters from brain electrical activity that indicate a seizure. Such approaches have met with limited success and have a number of drawbacks, including highly invasive and technically demanding and costly surgery for implanted systems. Approaches that do not invade the brain have marked limitations due mainly to the extremely low/unreliable S/N, and poor patient compliance with, e.g., the patient wearing electrodes on the scalp for extended periods.